Architectural designers and the interactive audience

Abstract

Game-engines are beginning to be utilised to represent spatial designs for the built environment. They are capable of realtime simulation of 3d spaces, including dynamic environmental conditions such as lighting, fire, rain, fog, smoke, and bodies of water, as well as physical interactions such as gravity and collision. These capabilities allow participants to experience the spatial design in ways that are not predetermined by the designer. For architects, video game culture and artifacts are highly accessible and provide new opportunities for interactive engagement with yet to be constructed spaces, and new media to extend the physical spaces of built architecture into meaningful virtual domains.